During the next few years he risked his life in one nautical 

 venture after another. Yet when he returned to Lisbon in 15 12, he 

 had little material gain to show for his seven years' apprenticeship, 

 apart from a slave he had bought somewhere in the Moluccan 

 islands. Magellan next found himself caught up in legal battle (a 

 breach of trust when some captured cattle and horses, which had 

 been partially under his charge, disappeared). Furious, he stormed 

 back to Lisbon to put his case before the king, but he was refused 

 audience and was ordered back to his post. The charge was later 

 dropped. At thirty-seven Magellan, already one of the most expe- 

 rienced seamen and campaigners in Europe, was told that he was 

 free to offer his services wherever he wished, for they were not 

 wanted in his own country. 



During the next year or so he remained in Portugal, giving 

 himself over to an intensive study of navigation. During these 

 months he met Ruy Faleiro, an astronomer and fellow student of 

 navigation whose brilliant treatises on determining latitude were 

 to be entrusted to Magellan. The art of navigation had come a long 

 way since the days of Pytheas, and Magellan was determined to 

 learn as much as he could. Although the cross-staff and the astrolabe 

 were in common use for finding latitude, there was still no reliable 

 means of calculating longitude (which depends on a clock that can 

 accurately record the difference between local and Greenwich time). 



Toward the end of 1 5 17 Magellan was ready to strike out. Since 

 Portugal did not want him, perhaps the emperor of Spain, Charles V, 

 would. Renouncing his Portuguese citizenship, he now went to 

 Seville, followed a few months later by Faleiro. Magellan was lucky 

 enough to meet and establish close friendship with a fellow 

 Portuguese, Diogo Barbosa (whose daughter became Magellan's 

 wife). In March 15 18 the two friends presented a bold plan to the 

 emperor : If Charles V would give them ships and men, Magellan 

 and Faleiro would undertake to find the shortest route to the 

 Moluccas — the highly prized Spice Islands in the South Seas. Also 

 they would prove that the Moluccas lay within Spain's boundaries. 



What was more, Magellan maintained that he could sail to the 

 Moluccas by a westerly route. This meant that he staked everything 

 on a conviction that there was a strait linking the Atlantic and 

 Pacific oceans. At that time, it was generally thought that the huge 

 land mass of the Americas continued unbroken to the South Pole. 

 There is no way of knowing whether Magellan actually knew that 

 this assumption was false. 



Charles V was so impressed by the plan that he agreed to fit out 

 an armada of five ships with a company of about 268 officers and 

 men and a two-year store of provisions. The emperor also promised 

 that Magellan and Faleiro would be granted a good share of any 

 profits that resulted from their discoveries. If they discovered more 

 than six islands, they could choose two from which they might 

 receive one-fifteenth of the profits. 



Many weary and frustrating months were to pass before the 

 armada could be assembled. For one thing, Faleiro was a man of 

 unstable and jealous temperament; he made so many enemies that 

 Magellan must have been relieved when Faleiro finally withdrew 

 from the venture, warned off by a gloomy astrological prediction. 

 And when news of the expedition reached Portugal, the Portuguese 

 king instructed his ambassador to prevent the expedition sailing. 



Sixteenth-century portrait of Magellan. 



27 



